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| April 21, 2005 | ||||
| By Jerry Capeci | ||||
| Just Doing What Comes Naturally | ||||
His actions were so predictable that, two months before his February 20, 2003 release, the FBI set up a sting operation with DePalma as its primary target, Gang Land has learned. In addition to a burly FBI agent who posed as a knock-around-guy, the sting also employed a DePalma crew member who ran a Bronx nightclub. The turncoat crew member was 38-year-old Peter Forchetti, who was convicted with DePalma, 73, of racketeering in a 1998 case along with 37 other Gambino mobsters and associates, including former acting boss John A. (Junior) Gotti. In December 2002, according to an FBI affidavit obtained by Gang Land, an undercover FBI agent using the name Jack Falcone began hanging out at Forchetti’s club, called the Mirage International Cabaret. A purported investor in the club, Falcone also played the role of jewel thief, fence and wannabe wiseguy as he waited for the inevitable: DePalma to move in on Forchetti’s action. Falcone, described by law enforcement sources as a veteran agent with experience in organized crime as well as drug investigations, didn’t have to wait too long. Four days after DePalma returned to his Scarsdale home, he sent out word that |
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Four days later, on February 28, DePalma met Forchetti at a hotel in Yonkers, wrote Ready. There, DePalma dropped the name of the family’s acting boss, Arnold Squitieri. (left) He said he would be regaining his rank as family capo, and, wrote Ready, he left very pleased “with a tribute payment of $3000” he got from Forchetti, courtesy of the FBI, of course. Four days later, Forchetti introduced Falcone to DePalma at a Spaghetti Western restaurant in Eastchester, according to the Ready affidavit. At the restaurant, Falcone learned firsthand that DePalma wasn’t bashful about his station in life, even when meeting people for the first time. He reported that he still had his capo’s “stripes,” and, as DePalma sat at a table with Forchetti and Falcone, he made a telephone call to “Neil Dilieto, a longtime crew member,” according to Ready. A week later, at the same restaurant, Forchetti gave his old friend Greg another gift, a specially-equipped cellphone with a built-in-bug that the feds would later use not only to record telephone conversations, but also bug any location where DePalma brought his trusty cellphone. From the first days of the probe, Falcone and Forchetti both tape recorded their own conversations with DePalma. Later, assistant U.S. attorneys Edward O’Callaghan and Christopher Conniff used affidavits by Ready and another |
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Over the next two years, the feds would tape record DePalma talks with Falcone and scores of others that would lead to the indictment last month of 32 mobsters and associates, including DePalma, Squitieri and Megale, on a host of racketeering and other charges including extortion, loansharking, gambling, insurance fraud and labor racketeering. On September 16, 2003, the first conversation picked up on the cell phone wiretap, caught the gregarious gangster negotiating a bribery scheme with an associate who the feds later learned was really a confidential informer working for state law enforcement officials, according to a report of the conversation obtained by Gang Land. State authorities, who played a major role in the 1998 racketeering indictment against DePalma, were well aware of DePalma’s legendary penchant for talking out of turn. They heard him blabbing about Junior Gotti and the innerworkings of the Gambino crime family 10 years ago in the case that landed both in federal prison. DePalma’s big-mouth first became notorious back on June 25, 1977 at 1:25 AM, just a few hours after he was inducted into the Gambino family when his words |
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After he was “made,” DePalma was so pumped up that before heading home, he stopped off at the theatre – the same place where he had posed for posterity at the right shoulder of Frank Sinatra in a famous picture of the legendary crooner surrounded by a potpourri of mobster fans. He was picked up on the wiretap telling pals about his big night. “To tell you the truth, I almost laughed a few times. I had trouble with the needle,” he told budding Colombo family soldier Thomas Ocera in a telephone call that Gang Land listened to many years ago. “Don’t say nothing to nobody,” said DePalma, who then quickly dialed up businessman Tommy Marson, whose smiling mug is at Sinatra’s left shoulder in the classic photo. “Just tell him I called and I said, ‘The ja-QUETTE fits fine.’ He’ll know what I mean,” he told a woman who answered and said that the businessman was out of town.
“Me and 10 others.
Eleven (inductees,)” he told another friend he phoned. “They
On and on it went, until 6:54 that morning, when he called the captain he did report to, Anthony (Nino) Gaggi, (left) to thank him again “for everything” and tell him he was still “feeling great” about the previous night, and would see him in a few days. |
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| Talking About What Might Have Been | ||||
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During the two-year long FBI sting, DePalma was heard both admiring and berating his fellow gangsters, both living and dead. He praised John Gotti for making DePalma a capo in charge of the Bronx, and denigrated jailed DeCavalcante boss John Riggi as a “rat” for stating that he authorized a murder by his family as a favor to Gotti.
In his response, DePalma cited the awful situation of his own son, Craig, (right) who initially agreed to cooperate against DiLeonardo, then backed out and hanged himself in a failed suicide attempt and is now in a vegetative state in a nursing home that the elder DePalma used to conduct mob business. “When I think of my son not testifying and him beating the case, I get sick,” said DePalma, noting angrily that DiLeonardo was acquitted because Craig refused to testify. |
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When Gregory DePalma
got out of prison two years ago, the aging gangster quickly began shooting
his mouth off and acting like an arrogant wiseguy, things he’s been doing
since the day he was inducted into the Gambino family nearly 28 years
ago. 
agent to obtain court
approval to tap DePalma’s cell phone and bug several locations where
DePalma met with 
called me
first. That’ll tell you where I’m at,” he said, boasting that he reported
“directly to him, Neil and Joe G,” referring to then-boss Paul Castellano,
underboss Aniello Dellacroce and consigliere Joe N. Gallo.
His most poignant,
albeit hypocritical remarks, may have come on Dec. 31, 2003 when he called
to wish Gotti’s widow Victoria and her son 
